“Be careful!”

Li Baobao’s voice was loud and worried so Rui Yifu paused in his step inside the room, looking over at the young man, then over at Bo who was rubbing his own soaked back with a pained expression. Zhu'er was laying her head in Li’s lap, and Baozi’s head rested on her ankles.

“The floor is wet,” Li Baobao added a bit sheepishly. He pointed to the large barely visible puddle in the room.

“Why haven’t either of you gotten it cleaned up?” Rui Yifu asked as he stepped to the edge of the puddle and looked down at it. He squinted at the sight of tiny little water bugs in it. “Eugh.”

“Bo slipped in it, and I did too earlier!” Li Baobao said with a heavy frown.

“Why haven’t any of you asked for it to be cleaned up?” Rui Yifu asked, pointedly glaring at Bo, “Zhu'er might get hurt.”

“Agh, you think I can go like this with wet clothing and my spine all mangled?”

“Ridiculous, how old are you two?”

“I’m twenty one! I think! My back is sixty six though,” Bo grumbled.

“I’m eighteen,” Li Baobao said, “but we were walking all day and now we’ve finally gotten to sit in our own room. I have weird bruises on my ankles. I don’t like to complain but getting up feels sort of impossible right now. That puddle’s been here for a bit, I don’t know who spilled water in here.”

Bo was looking at Li Baobao with raised brows, “you’re younger than me! Why do I even listen to you?”

Rui Yifu ignored the discussion to crouch down near the puddle and grabbed one of the bug. It was already half dead, wiggling its little limbs weakly as he held it between his nails. It then went limp before crumbling into little tiny pieces of pallid ice that evaporated. This was not some accidentally spilled water, he realized. “Well if neither of you two are going to get someone or clean it up, I guess it falls to me to be the responsible one,” he gave an exaggerated sigh, snapping open his fan to get their attention. Zhu'er sat up and blinked, looking up at Rui Yifu. “Getting some rags shouldn’t be too difficult for either of you.”

“Wipe it up with your skirt then,” Bo suggested sourly.

Rui Yifu gestured lightly at the water, which suddenly took a weird gelatinous consistency as it rose from the ground. Rui frowned, it felt all wrong. Like a stagnant pond. Where did this water come from? He flicked his fan and the water slithered through the air like a snake outside of the window, before shortly after there was a splashing sound as it hit the ground in the courtyard.

The three others stared in silence before Zhu'er started clapping her hands, speaking quickly and excitedly to Li Baobao while pointing at Rui Yifu. Li Baobao smiled, “she said that was really exciting.”

Rui Yifu felt a bit of heat at the tips of his ears, “exciting? I didn’t do much. I just made the water move outside,” he smiled anyway down at the little girl. “But I’m happy it delighted her so much.”

“How did you do that?” Bo asked, wide eyed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Boss do stuff like that.”

“Ah, it’s pretty simple. Water’s one of the most base elements,” Rui Yifu spoke idly as he moved to sit down beside Zhu'er, holding the doll out to her. Her eyes grew even wider as she carefully took the doll from his hand. “For some people, when learning the elements the usual progression is water, fire, then earth, then wood, then metal. With the right training even an idiot like you could probably get some control over it… after twenty years.”

Bo’s brow furrowed as he looked off into the distance, “twenty years is a while. I dunno if I can wait that long.”

“That wasn’t… that wasn’t what I was trying to say,” Rui Yifu said. “Anyway, I’m teaching you something so you can at least listen. There’s some people out there who say air should be considered a sixth element, based on the theories of energy from outside of the Four Kingdoms, but until someone like Lady Gu or Lord Song starts seriously taking it up, it’s just going to be a contentious point of debate among scholars and cultivators. Regardless, each of these elements are tied into the Four Houses. There is the Jade Flame, the Black Flame, the Amber Flame, and finally the White Flame, but this is all theory again on how the ties work.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I don’t get it,” Bo shrugged.

“Are there always debates about things like this?” Li Baobao asked.

Rui Yifu nodded, “people always want to say they have the answer, so they’ll always argue. I remember one scholar I knew who wanted to find the answer to some forgotten question so badly that that he decided to try going to the First Palace and see if the library there has the answer, it’s said that even after the heavens struck down the Last Emperor, the First Palace still stands intact, so it must follow that the library would be too.”

“Did he find it?”

“I don’t know, I never saw him again,” Rui Yifu replied with a frown, struck with sad nostalgia that disgusted him. He did not like dwelling on the past, although somehow it always seemed to find him in some way. He glanced down at Zhu'er who was busy fiddling with her new toy and frowned as he saw someone else there for a moment. He covered his mouth and stared at the wall.

“Oh! Actually speaking of the First Palace, I was telling Zhu'er a story about it.” Li Baobao smiled.

“Did she like it?”

His smile vanished with a look of defeat, “she said it wasn’t a very good story.”

“Well there’s dozens of hundreds of stories about what happened to the Ancient Dynasty,” Rui Yifu said while running his fingers through the girl’s hair. “In the North, the story usually ends with the gods raising the mountains with four gates, so that people could go back and forth at will to save others stuck in there or to pray for those who had perished, Liu even says we’re on one of the pilgrim’s paths to them.”

“That’s not a very uplifting end either,” Li Baobao pointed out.

“It’s about the First Palace, I can’t think of a single happy story about that place,” Rui Yifu sighed, “maybe a good romance story would have been better, like the Soldier and the Herbalist or the Silk Weaving Maiden and the Archer…”

“Urgh, romance stories are boring,” Bo crossed his arms, “scary stories are way more exciting. Back home my sisters used to tell me all sorts of good ones.”

Rui Yifu picked up a bead that was dangling from his belt and flicked it at Bo’s head, the young man slapping his hand where the bead hit. “Nobody asked you to bark.” While Bo was swearing at him he folded his hands into his sleeves. “The First Palace and Silent Mountains are said to contain the whole of the old Ancient Dynasty’s core territory. People go there because they want to make names for themselves, atone, find treasure, or look for answers like my friend did. So, why is Zhu'er being brought there?” He looked at Li Baobao with a skewering glare as he moved his arms from his sleeves to wrap around the little girl.

“Why are you asking me, if I can ask?” Li Baobao looked alarmed and confused.

“If you were telling her stories about the First Palace, I would assume that maybe she mentioned why Liu wants to take her there.”

“She said it was to see her mother, but I don’t know what she means by that exactly. Her mother is dead apparently,” Li Baobao’s eyes were now downcast. Bo’s own face had suddenly sobered up as he glanced at the little girl with something Rui Yifu thought must have been pity.

Rui Yifu held the girl a bit tighter, who was either still distracted by the doll or just did not mind being held by him. He hoped it was the second one. “Did she mention her father?”

Li Baobao was shrinking into himself it seemed. Rui was watching his presence flinch away. “It sounds like he’s… not a good person.”

Rui Yifu gazed at Li and Bo, pulling Zhu'er onto his lap and holding her close. She was a tiny frail child, adrift in a strange place and surrounded by people she barely knew. What sort of nonsense was Liu Xie telling her? What would taking the little girl to the First Palace accomplish? The last person he spoke to who wanted to take children to the First Palace had been a monster with a nice face but Rui Yifu could not bring himself to put Liu Xie in the same category which angered him. What was he planning for the poor girl then?

He remembered once more he was still hungry, and looked back at the two men. Two weak humans. What could they do to him? They looked much better than the guard did, Bo was verging on some blossoming he thought. He could sense it, faintly. But it wouldn’t be enough to put up any resistance against Rui. He could kill them both easily and be gone with her in a few minutes.

There would be nothing they could do.

He could take Zhu'er and they could live together somewhere nice. Maybe he could even go home. It had been long enough, surely.

Rui Yifu stood up, looking down at the two mortal men wondering who to eat first.